Cold, Cold Heart

A scientist on the verge of an earth shattering discovery goes missing from her cottage. Meanwhile scientist Katie Flanagan has accepted an appointment at a small UK base in Antarctica, where she will work as a doctor’s assistant during the long, remote winter. A lawyer looking for the missing scientist, who may have discovered a cure for cancer, follows a trail to Antarctica. On the base, accidents have been occurring with worrying frequency, with the team totally shut off from the outside world, Katie doesn’t know who to trust….or who to fear. Creepy and claustrophobic

I received an ARC from NetGalley to read and review. The below is my honest, unbiased opinion. Thank you, Christine Poulson, the publisher, and NetGalley, for allowing me to review.

After the events of Deep Water, scientist Katie Flanagan has gained an undeserved reputation as a troublemaker. Her research career has foundered. When an accident creates an opening at an Antarctic station, she seizes the opportunity, flying in on the last plane before winter and the months of darkness close off all escape routes. Unfortunately for Katie, a revenge-seeking killer is at large at the station.

Meanwhile patent lawyer Daniel Marchmont has been asked by a venture capitalist to conduct background research into a company involved in Antarctic experiments. His investigations threaten to uncover scientific fraud and expose powerful individuals, some of them at the Antarctic station. Hitting too close to the truth, Daniel's sleuthing puts Katie in fresh danger.

Then the power at the research station fails. Will the killer help save them all . . . or kill them one by one?

I absolutely love remote-location serial killer books, and I enjoyed this one. I found the characters to be developed and the writing to be captivating. I commend the author for accomplishing something so few can: penning a thrilling, mysterious read and intertwining moments that took actual research and not making me bored to tears. I read this genre for the excitement, not to feel like I'm sitting in a college science class. Never did the author make me lose interest, and I appreciated that. If you enjoy remote-setting thrillers, you'll like this one!

This novel held me in its thrall throughout its entirety. I read it in three joyous sittings, almost unable to tear myself away from it to sleep, and when waking early, eager to continue reading the spell binding story. It’s a tremendously enjoyable novel full of excitement and tension, but also, through meticulous research, very interesting and informative.
The novel is mainly set in Antarctica, where scientist Katie Flanagan has joined a ten strong team living in the British Antarctic Survey two-year-old Wilson base. For Katie, this is the opportunity of a lifetime and will give her ample time to decide upon her future, as well as participate in an exciting research project. The opportunity to join the team had arisen due to the misfortune of a team member who had been evacuated by air after a serious accident. Her plane in from Port Stanley would be the last flight in. The midwinter temperatures would drop below 50ºC and there would be six months of darkness, an ideal situation for Katie’s research project. But as friendships are forged and battles with the weather make conditions almost unbearable, a body is discovered after a raging blizzard uncovered it from its hiding place. The ten have become nine and one of the remaining crew is a merciless killer. There is no escape for anyone.

Meanwhile back in England, Michael has returned home from his long, tiring business trip on the other side of the world, to discover that his wife, research scientist Flora Mitchell, has not returned to their home in Cambridge from their holiday cottage in rural Norfolk, where she had retreated with her beloved cat Marmaduke, a long haired mackerel tabby. She had gone to the cottage for peace and quiet so that she could write up her lab books and get ready a proposal to further her research. She had discovered a cure for cancer that was so very exciting. The new method was far less brutal than current treatments like radiotherapy or chemotherapy. On board was Kyle Linstrum, a venture capitalist, who was looking for partner funding to move the discovery forward. Michael drove over to their cottage and there discovered Flora was missing and poor Marmaduke was hungry and bedraggled. Michael immediately contacted the police and a ‘missing persons’ investigation was initiated. Who knows how long Marmaduke had been fending for himself.
These two crime threads are equally odious and compelling. With wonderful storytelling and a cast of expertly crafted characters, this novel is bursting with both action and attitude. The cracking pace and the darkness of the crimes make this story addictive, absorbing and also terrifying and shocking. My favourite character is Katie. She is not only warm, compassionate and highly skilled, but also brave, principled and decisive. I loved both story threads equally and I couldn’t wait to find out how the novel ended. I was not disappointed, the finale was totally electrifying but also satisfying and rounding the novel off in style, especially the story about Katie’s friend, which left me very happy and smiling.
I would like to thank NetGalley and publisher Lion Fiction for my copy of 'Cold Cold Heart', sent to me in return for an honest review. I loved everything about it, even the gorgeous front cover illustration, and would not hesitate to recommend it as an excellent read. I am a first-time reader of this author and definitely want to read more novels by Christine Poulson. I have already looked at her backlist and see that 'Cold, Cold Heart' was preceded by ‘Deep Water’ in which Katie is a character. This will be a must read for me. It’s 9.5/10 from me.

Thank you very much to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book before it’s published.

The setting of the book was fascinating! I really enjoyed following the life in Antarctica and wished for more of that. The story is interesting in its core, but the writing didn’t help to reach its full potential. It is also hard to see who the main character is. Despite enjoying most of the book, I didn’t get the main idea. Some introductions were sporadic and lacked the context. Without getting into the spoilers I still don’t understand how the title relates to the plot which for me is very important. My least favourite part is the chapters where the narration is happening on behalf of a cat. It was strange and out of style.

In general, I really liked the idea of this book’s plot and enjoyed most of it but hoped for more drama and thriller.

Very interesting book, keeps you on the edge of your seat and the pages turning. I must say some of the opening chapters written from one of the victims cats was quite unique. I loved the setting, midwinter at a remote base in Antarctica. It was creepy and really scary. Not only can you die from the cold, but there is a killer among the small group. I wish the book would of followed up with the characters after they found out who the killer was. I would of loved to read on about the rest of their winter at the base. But, I guess the book was about solving the mystery, but the other parts are great and I didn't want the story to end.

Thank you Netgalley and Lion Fiction for the eARC.
This is the 2nd in the Katie Flanagan series. Unfortunately, I hadn't read the 1st, but will definitely do so, as I would like to reconnect with the recurring characters. However, this was easily read as a standalone.
Katie has signed up for an 8-month stint at a research camp in Antarctica where a group is collecting data on the effects of light deprivation on the human body and mind. She will be assisting the medical doctor, Sara, who is relieved to have another woman on board. The rest of the group are all men and since they have to live in close quarters for many months, it will be comforting for the 2 women to work together. The world they inhabit is as hostile as it can get; temperatures down as far as -70 are possible and they will be in complete darkness for several months. Death lurks around every corner as soon as they leave the facility, it's frighteningly plausible to get disoriented, lost and freeze to death.
But it proves to be deadly inside as well. Sara goes missing and is found several days later in a snowdrift, stabbed in the heart. Meanwhile in England, Flora Mitchell, an imminent researcher, who had been missing for weeks, is also found murdered. The story veers from the UK to Antarctica and one of my favorite characters in England was poor Marmaduke, Flora's cat, who had to survive on his own for weeks before Flora's husband found and rescued him.
The scenes in Antarctica were fascinating and harrowing, they evoked claustrophobia and a feeling of relief that I was safely at home. It's obvious Christine Poulson did extensive research and it was a treat to visit the area without leaving my couch. Definitely a real page turner, I would recommend this as a book for anyone who loves visiting exciting locales and edge of your seat mysteries.

Having really enjoyed the first in the Katie Flanagan series, I was really pleased to have the chance to review the second. Although this story does stand alone, many of the characters which appeared in the previous novel, “Deep Water,” also appear in this, and so I would suggest that, if you can, you do read them in order. Besides which, “Deep Water,” is an excellent read – so, if you do read “Cold, Cold Heart,” first, then I urge you to go back and discover the first in this series.

Having caused something of a storm at the end of, “Deep Water,” Katie has decided to take a post at a small, and remote, British research base in Antarctic. One of the previous members of the base has been lifted out after an accident and Lyle Linstrom, who we also met in the last book, has suggested Katie for the post. Of course, we know that Lyle is a man with a finger in many pies and, back home, he has asked lawyer, Daniel Marchmont (who also appeared in the previous novel, with wife Rachel and their daughter Chloe) to look into an investment he is considering. As before, this includes some important scientific research, but the principal investigator, Flora Mitchell, seems to have gone missing…

The author is adept at interweaving the mystery back home, with Katie’s life on the remote Antarctic base. She is one of only two women there, the other being the doctor, Sara. There are also eight men, including the base commander, Graeme, chef, Ernesto, Adam, the youngest on the base, Alex, the mechanic, Nick and Justin, who are both astronomers, Rhys, a meteorologist and Craig, the taciturn communications person. With months of darkness ahead, Katie begins to settle into her new duties. However, someone on the base is playing tricks and what if the former base member didn’t have an accident? What if she is trapped, out of reach with the outside world, with a killer?

This is an exciting and engaging mystery. I loved the interplay of the characters, the various storylines and the unusual Antarctic setting, which felt very authentic. I really look forward to reading more novels by Christine Poulson. If you like character driven crime novels, with engaging settings, which rely more on intelligent writing than gore and violence, then you will enjoy this. Recommended highly. I received a copy of this from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

A remote station in the Antarctic with no way out, ten people, one killer. Really enjoyed reading this one. It was a good choice to set the main action in the remote region of Antarctica, the fact that no-one could leave or get help allowed the tension to build nicely. The author provided an interesting pool of potential suspects, and I changed my mind a couple of times before deciding on who I thought the killer was. Yay, I guessed right in the end. This is the second book in the series, I didn't read the first one, but I don't think it hampered my enjoyment of this book at all. Recommended if you like mystery/suspense books.

The British explorer Robert Scott * (more on him below) said ‘Great God! this is an awful place’ about the Antarctic.

Nothing in Christine Poulson’s thrilling new book would make you argue with that verdict, and although her group of isolated workers in the ice have many modern devices and developments to help, nothing can take away the desolation and the dark, the cold and the danger.

Regular readers will know that I am a big fan of Chrissie’s books (and also a friend of hers as a result of our meeting online via the blog) – and this one is an absolute winner. It’s a fantastic crime novel featuring a small group of people stuck together in a small place, with some very nasty things going on. There is also a parallel strand of the story being played out back in the UK. And at the same time the book is very very informative on how an Antarctic research station works.

I actually questioned Chrissie closely to find out how she knew so much both about life in the Antarctic, and about the medical issues at the heart of the book – it seemed impossible that she could write so well and convincingly on these matters without direct experience, but she assures me it is all just her research, and the good fortune to meet some people who are experts.

She certainly has done a marvellous job.

Kate (who featured in the previous book, Deep Water) has taken a job at the Antarctic Research Station: once the plane has left she will be there for the next nine months, with no way out. There are ten people shut in together. That number is going to go down… as the tagline says, ‘snowbound with a stone-cold killer.’




The atmosphere at the base is very well-done – casual and interesting to begin with, and full of intriguing information such as that there are no viruses, no flu no colds, down there, because it is too cold for them to survive, and explanations as to how the food and cooking works. There are vivid descriptions of a group of people with very different personalities and lives, trying to get along together: watching boxsets and listening to music, or assembling for a splendid game of Monopoly. Then things start going seriously wrong. There is an absolute stunner of a scene where Kate (a doctor who is qualified but has never practised) has to perform an emergency operation – my own blood pressure was rising throughout. It resembled (and I have no higher compliment) the medical scenes in Christianna Brand’s Green for Danger.

The action alternates with developments back in the UK – something funny is going on concerning some key medical research, and there is a connection with the Antarctic station. Kate’s friends Rachel and Dan get caught up in this: a scientist has gone missing, there are ethical questions regarding work that may or may not have been plagiarized.

Altogether this is a marvellous book: beautifully structured, eerie and atmospheric, but also funny and very convincing.

Yet again, I make my complaint: why do some books get so much attention and publicity, while a great crime story like this one flies below the radar to some extent? Cold Cold Heart should be much better-known.

The top picture could be Kate on the ice – but is actually a photo from an Australasian Antactic expedition more than 100 years ago, from the State Library of New South Wales.

* Robert Scott was the leader of the British 1911-12 expedition which hoped to be the first to reach the South Pole, but actually came second. I found wonderful pictures of the British adventure online: the photos were taken by Hubert George Ponting, and are in the collection of the Library of Congress. I spent a fascinated half an hour just gazing at them, and chose the second and third pictures here to feature.

The ice picture is the Grotto iceberg – you can just see two members of the expedition in the mouth of it, to get the scale of it. The man with the pickaxe is Edgar Evans, one of those who died in 1912 on the way home.

There is an Antarctic angle to this book on the blog (though that's a slight spoiler): and the ethics of academic research feature in Dorothy L Sayers' Gaudy Night. Alistair MacLean was an exemplary writer of thrillers, and he wrote a number of frozen adventures (Arctic rather than Antarctic) of which Ice Station Zebra is the most iconic.

And you can find all Christine Poulson's other crime books on the blog, along with some  cross-blogging adventures with her...

"The bright day is done, and we are for the dark."

Katie Flanagan, a medical doctor and scientific researcher, after the events from book one, is bound for Antartica for an 8 month stint as the second doctor on the Wilson outpost base. She'll be there to examine the effects of how humans adapt to the long months of darkness and isolation. There are only 9 other peeople on the base, all but one are males -- and she will be shut up with them for the duration of the dark. Despite her anxiety and trepidation, things are going as well as can be expected until her friend, and the only other female at the site, the doctor in charge, Sara, has gone missing. A hunt for her has gone without result and there are other issues that take Katie's former training and expertise to the forefront.

Meanwhile, attorney Daniel Marchmont, his wife Rachel, and their daughter, Chloe, continue the treatments for Chloe's genetic blood disorder -- Diamond Blackfan Amemia (the research that Katie was working on before her whistleblowing got her in trouble). Daniel is again working with Lyle on a new theory, with his new company, Thesus, whose had a breakthrough in cancer research. When the head of that project goes missing, Daniel and Lyle are at a loss to go further with the development of the theory and the acquisition of the patents. Could there be a connection to missing Sara? In another of those wild coincidences in this series -- there is -- but NO SPOILERS.

Despite the necessity to suspend disbelief over the fact that Katie's situation is related to the disappearance of Dr. Flora Mitchell, the story and plot are very entertaining and will keep the reader glued to the pages. The missing women aside, the main character is really Antarctica. The details about life on the base and the strain of living in that hostile environment are very compelling and interesting. Katie continues to be someone that we want to get to know better and I am quite eager to see where she will go next after her experiences in wintering over in Antarctica.

Thank you to NetGalley and Lion Fiction for the ARC to read and review. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone interested in medical thrillers. The suspense lies in the mystery of what happened to Sara in Antarctica with only the 10 people on the base. I totally enjoyed it! Can't wait for #3 in the series! I'm so lucky to have been able to read the second immediately after the first -- these should be read in order.

Oh dear. Almost everyone else seems to have loved Cold Cold Heart, but I'm afraid I couldn't get on with it at all.

The plot is in effect a classic Country House Murder mystery, moved to an Antarctic research station in winter: ten characters completely cut off from the outside world, one of whom is a killer. Katie Flanagan, a young medical research scientist is flown in to replace someone after an accident just as winter cuts the station off for months. Claustrophobic and sinister things begin to happen, and we are left to try to spot the killer.

My problem with the book is that it all just seems so clunky and even crudely done sometimes so I just didn’t believe in the characters or the plot and couldn’t get involved at all. We get bits of the story from far too many points of view (even that of a cat, believe it or not, which is wholly unnecessary and horribly twee) and everything is spelled out in plodding chunks of unconvincing exposition. There is a lot of forced and sometimes patronisingly unnecessarily spelling out of obvious details, like "Anything she didn't have now she'd have to do without, because where she was going, there were no shops, no mail, no Amazon." Gosh, thanks - I'd never have known if you hadn't said!

Elsewhere, characters give each other great swathes of information which they already know. For example, early on Katie is talking to her best friend with whom, we are told, she has "talked it over so many times," but we still get:
"What'll you be doing there?" Rachel asked.
"I'll be taking over this guy's research project – I'm well qualified for it. It's about the way human beings adapt to darkness and isolation. Lack of light suppresses the action of the pineal gland with the result…" etc. etc etc.
Two close friends having a farewell chat about something they have "talked over so many times"? Really? The whole book reads like this and it all felt false to me; I felt I was just being clumsily set up for a puzzle (with "twists", of course) but wasn't the slightest bit convinced by the characters or the setting – which meant I wasn't very interested in the puzzle.

I'm afraid I got very fed up with the book and ended up skimming quite large chunks without feeling I'd missed much. I'm plainly out of step with the huge majority of reviewers so don't let me put you off before reading other reviews, but I'm afraid I really didn't like Cold Cold Heart.

(I received an ARC vis NetGalley.)

"For the first time she fully grasped how far she was going – truly to the end of the earth."

Books about Antarctica are some of my favorites and this mystery/thriller was a good read. This is actually the first book I've read about a British base at the South Pole. I do believe all the ones I've read before have been about U.S. bases or expeditions.

This was a twisty mystery most of the way through the story. There wasn't a huge amount of character development and towards the end of the book the story lost some steam for me.

But it is still worth reading. I would rate it 3.5 stars rounded up to 4 just because I like the locale so much.

One thing I learned that had never crossed my mind before - the British have a totally different game of Monopoly than we do here in the U.S.

I received this book from Lion Fiction through Net Galley in the hopes that I would read the book and leave an unbiased review.

Interesting storyline keeping the reader engrossed. Multiple threads which come together later in the book.

This was an enjoyable thriller. But it wasn’t gripping enough to keep me entertained. The writing was just ok.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I honestly didn’t think this would be for me. I was pleasantly wronged! It was brilliant! A medically trained scientist goes to ‘winter over’ in Antarctica and things take a dark and tragic twist. It was gripping and I learned some fascinating things which is always a bonus. It’s not at all something I would usually lean toward but it’s exceptionally written and an excellent thriller.

Cold cold heart by Christine Paulson.
Six months of darkness are about to begin.
Scientist Katie Flanagan has an undeserved reputation as a trouble-maker and her career has foundered. When an accident creates an opening on a remote Antarctic research base she seizes it, flying in on the last plane before the subzero temperatures make it impossible to leave. Meanwhile patent lawyer Daniel Marchmont has been asked to undertake due diligence on a breakthrough cancer cure. But the key scientist is strangely elusive and Daniel uncovers a dark secret that leads to Antarctica. Out on the ice a storm is gathering. As the crew lock down the station they discover a body and realise that they are trapped with a killer.
An absolutely fantastic read with brilliant  characters. I was surprised with who it was. I was suspecting someone else.  5*.

Overall this was an in the moment enjoyable read. It fit in rather well with my recent theme of cold reads, and the thriller/whodunnit aspect kept me reading straight through after bedtime.

The main character was engrossing, the setting informative and fascinating. I didn't like how derailed the plot became with minor side stories for side characters. The time spent building on them could have been spent furthering on the more important characters, and the overarcing mystery.

Although I enjoyed the ending, it felt rather tied up and gifted to me. Just fell right into place, boom, done. Too easy considering all the things that had gone on. Still, this was a solid 3 star read. A perfectly decent way to pass an evening,